Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 318 3rd International Conference on Social, Economic, and Academic Leadership (ICSEAL 2019) Improvements in the methodology of identifying the leading cinematography companies Marina Ivanova Graduate School of Economics and Engineering Peter the Great Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University Polytechnicheskaya str. 29, 195251 Saint Petersburg Russian Federation e-mail: [email protected] Tatiana Rtisheva Department of Screen Arts Saint Petersburg State University of Film and Television Pravda str. 13, 191119 Saint Petersburg Russian Federation e-mail: [email protected] Abstract State support is currently playing a key role in the production and distribution of commercial films in Russian Federation. Consequently, this support creates certain economic dependence of film production on the state and this dependence keeps growing. The protectionist model of state support that had emerged lately is already constraining growth of the domestic cinematography, not allowing it to develop independently, according to the market rules. At the same time, government not only does not derive revenue of film distribution (even being, in fact, the major movie producer), but often does not even return its investment. One of the mechanisms of state support in Russia is the subsidizing (refundable and non-refundable) for the leading cinematography companies by the Cinema Fund which represents the economic agent of the Ministry of Culture. Selection criteria for leading companies include attendance, television rating level, awards received by company’s films, period of operation of a company, and the quantity of released films (amount of copies that is taken into account). Our paper analyses the methodology that the Cinema Fund uses to compile this rating of the leading cinematography companies in terms of selection criteria and features of assessing. Our results demonstrate that the current methodology does not enable the actual leaders of the cinema market to be identified. In addition, the priorities in weighting assigned to criteria are unfounded. Moreover, present methodology does not allow considering the data for modern channels of distribution the audio-visual products. In addition, the methodology is also discriminatory against new companies. The paper provides some recommendations for changing the methodology and clarifies the selection criteria. 1 Introduction Cinematography now is not only an art form, but also a branch of economic activity. Apart from the artistic quality, any film (or movie, as it is called in its American variant) must meet the requirements of self-sufficiency and competitiveness. Films become the trademarks of certain locations and help to increase budgets of cities and even countries through various channels (see e.g. Strielkowski 2017; Bąkiewicz et al. 2017; or Strielkowski 2018). Russian film industry works in market environment for more than twenty-five years now, but it still has not reached the stage of sustainable and balanced development (Beumers 1999; Graham 2000; or Faraday 2010). State support is currently playing a key role in commercial films production and distribution in Russia (Van Gorp 2011). Consequently, it creates economic dependence of film production on the state and this dependence keeps growing. The protectionist model of state support that had emerged lately is already constraining growth of the domestic cinematography, not allowing it to develop independently, according to the market rules. At the same time, government not only does not derive revenue of film distribution (even being, in fact, the major movie producer) but often does not even return its investment. Thence, the mechanism of the state support needs to be improved. Two main channels of the state subsidizing are the Cinema Fund which is the economic agent of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Culture itself. The Cinema Fund supports commercial films (so it can count on return of its investment) while the Ministry of Culture subsidize films for children and youth, debuts, Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 68 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 318 art movies etc. Every year the Cinema Fund selects leading cinematography companies in the country for special subsidizing their projects (it can be refundable and non-refundable). The paper analyses the methodology that the Cinema Fund uses to compile the rating of the leaders in terms of selection criteria and features of assessing. The focal question for the research is to assess whether the reviewed methodology allows actual leaders of the cinema market to be identified. Thereby the effectiveness of the state policy is getting indirectly analysed. 2 Current characteristics and features of cinema state support in Russia In 2013, Russia reached the top ten cinema markets in the world and has been staying there ever since. By the end of 2017, the country was the largest market in Europe (in terms of number of viewers) and took 6th place worldwide (EFARN 2018). Nevertheless, Russian film production still has problems with profitability, viewers and distribution. According to the NevaFilm research (EFARN 2018), the share of viewers for Russian films reached 38% in the first half of 2018 (there was 19% in the first half of 2017). The number of films produced in the country has been rising in recent years. At the same time, the number of films receiving state support is decreasing with simultaneous increase of number of subsidies: while more than 70 projects received public funding in 2015–2016, 57 projects did it in 2017 (Fontaine 2018). The following data shows some specificities of the cinematography state support in Russia (Tables 1 and 2). Table 1. Number of films produced in Russia Year 2014 2015 2016 2017 Films produced 82 123 136 124 Source: Cinema Fund (2018) Table 2. Amount of public funding in Russian cinematography (in billions of rubles) Year 2014 2015 2016 2017 Total amount of subsidies (billions of rubles), including: 5,9 4,9 4,82 6,0 Ministry of Culture 2,9 1,9 1,97 3,0 Cinema foundation 3,0 3,0 2,85 3,0 Source: Cinema Fund (2018) It is important to notice that public funding accounts for more than 50% of total production budget of produced films. It creates economic dependence of film production on the state and this dependence keeps growing. The protectionist model of state support that had emerged lately is already constraining growth of the domestic cinematography, not allowing it to develop independently, according to the market rules (Tkacheva 2015). At the same time, government not only does not derive revenue of film distribution (even being, in fact, the major movie producer) but often does not even return its investment. According to Cinema Fund (2018), the major source of income generation in cinematography today is distribution in cinemas, including screening abroad (70%), although other channels of distribution (TV screening, screening rights selling, including VoD platforms which constitute about 30%) have already significant share in the total income. The state support of production and distribution of films in Russia is a function of two institutions. The Ministry of Culture supports films for children and youth, debut films, experimental and art movies, educational film series, documentaries, popular science films, and animations. The Federal Cinema Fund supports the production and promotion of commercial films for mass audiences. The main goal of the Cinema Foundation is ‘increasing the competitiveness of Russian cinematography’, including popularizing national films worldwide. According to Nevafilm Research, on average, 46% of domestic movies distributed during the five-year period were subsidized by the Cinema Foundation or the Ministry of Culture. Russian Ministry of Culture usually provides subsidies on non-repayable basis, while the Cinema Fund can have their funds back and reinvest. Some data on the Cinema Fund support is provided in the Table 3 that follows below. Usually, the Cinema Fund provides 3 billion rubles annually for supporting Russian film industry and reinvests some amount of money on top of that. 69 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 318 Table 3. Amount of public funding in Russian cinematography 2016 2017 Amount of Amount of Focus of support Number of subsidies, million Number of projects subsidies, million projects rubles rubles Film production, incl: 56 3500,1 57 3847,0 Feature films 44 2900,1 48 3297,0 Animated films 11 600,0 9 550,0 Development of film projects 7 44,9 11 54,2 Distribution 25 729,0 20 715,0 Source: Cinema Fund (2018) In 2017, besides 3 billion rubles of annual subsidizing, 1,6 billion rubles was reinvested. In general, there are two main types of the Cinema Fund subsidizing. The first one is for “ordinary” grantees, the subsidy is up to 80 million rubles and they can get it on refundable basis. The second type is subsidizing for the ‘leading companies of Russian film production’. Every year the Cinema Fund compiles a rating of leading cinematography companies so they can apply for the “priority funding”. The leaders can get up to 400 million rubles and there is a possibility to have it on the non-refundable basis. The methodology of selection the leading companies is the main area of analysis in this study. 3 Methodology of identifying the leading cinematography companies: analysis and improvements The selection methodology that the Cinema Fund uses is based on computation of scores for the criteria listed in the Table 4. The selection criteria include three main areas of assessment: viewers’ evaluation (which can give the most points), professional evaluation (which includes film festivals and awards) and the last assessment area - period of operation and quantity of released films. In 2018, the methodology has changed, and an additional criterion was added - attendance in cinemas abroad during 5 latest years.